CONTINUING SAGAS OF TRANSFORMATION

It was around the beginning of the new year,1998, that I began to suspect I was entering a second cycle of spiritual awakening. The first cycle, which had begun abruptly four years earlier, had completely altered my life, taking me from panic to deep delight while wiping out my entire belief system. Wonderful but sometimes debilitating waves of energy had swept through my body, gradually tapering off to a manageable level over the years. Not only had my body learned how to meet those energies at their own level, it had also grown accustomed to the whole idea. . . waves of energy had become part of life. It was not unusual to experience waves of vibration, incredible peace, love or actual ecstasy. Although I never ceased to feel immense honor, gratitude and love for these manifestations of Spirit, these inner and outer ripples had come to feel. . . well. . .normal.

So it was with soft excitement and a hint of trepidation that I began to notice the intensity of the vibrations increasing again. Within a month things began to happen.
One day, as I sat at my desk in my office paying bills, time stopped outright, or rather, there no longer was such a thing as time, never had been, and never would be. Instead, everything was “joy”. Simply everything was made out of joy: my chair, my pen, my fax machine, my body, even my bills, all composed of joy.

Joy? Joy was something I had never experienced before in my life. I’d been happy, quite happy. I’d had probably more than my fair share of ecstasy since the energies had been coming in. But joy? Never! This was distinctly different. And it was everywhere; it was everything; it was all there was. If I could say it was something besides joy, which I can’t, I would say it was the bliss of Heaven.

Since there was no time, I can’t say how long this went on, but since there was no noticeable chunk missing from my day, I’d say it was maybe only five or ten minutes. Afterwards, life reappeared. Not knowing what else to do, I just kept paying my bills. Somehow it never occurred to me that this was preparing me for what was yet to come.

The very next week, while in a healing session with a client, my life once again took a huge turn in a new direction. When I was working, I would be absolutely at my finest. I would be centered. I would be grounded. My “stuff” would miraculously step aside and Spirit would come through. I would merge with my client, who would usually, but not always, be on the table.

So there I was in session, feeling full of Spirit, full of love, and all at once everything disappeared. It was as if I had been watching a VCR movie and someone unexpectedly pulled out the plug. The thought came up, “Hey! Where’d everyone go?”(“everyone” meaning Cari and her client). The all-encompassing feeling was that the screen had gone completely blank.

Yet, the movie somehow continued on. While it was quite clear there was nothing there, the images of this movie nevertheless ran on and on, very far away, floating in nowhere. Life itself had no more ”reality” than a dream. All there was, was a huge cavernous space with no end. Its hugeness was infinite. And it was absolutely empty... yet it was wholly full of all things that had ever existed, and ever would, and even those that never would. As for me, I was not anywhere in any one location, not even as an observer. I had essentially no feelings. I was just part of the cavernousness.

Somewhere there arose another thought, ”How will this healing session go on with no one there?” And yet, there didn’t seem to be any problem. The session went on, ”Cari” knew what to do in spite of a curious empty feeling, the client seemed to have a good session and didn’t appear to notice anything out of the ordinary.

After about forty minutes, the session was over. Everything returned to normal and life went on. At least it was normal until the very next day, when the exact same thing happened with another client, this time for close to an hour.

If I had not been somewhat prepared by my experience with joy the week before, by now I would have been in a panic. As it was, even though my mind knew these experiences were positive indications of further spiritual awakening, my body was starting to get very nervous. When I merely thought about my next client, I felt myself tighten with fear. However, subsequent healing sessions went by uneventfully, as if nothing unusual had ever occurred. I was once again filled with love and blissfully feeling Spirit throughout my body while I was working.

But things would never be the same. My entire relationship to God shifted with this new awareness of something even bigger that included God, even as it included us. Daily dramas seemed insignificant when seen as being transparent movies superimposed on Full Emptiness. Even my attachment to ”Cari” has paled, with the recognition that all emotions, memories and experiences belonged to the body, and that ”I” was simply part of the Cavernousness. I’ve been taking each moment one at a time, knowing by now that transformation has its own timetable.

PART 2

The drama was over. The integration process began. It was so subtle. I would be beginning to react to something in my life, and the truth of the void would flash through my mind, making any attachment to outcome a moot point.

One of the more interesting realizations that sprang forth at this time, revolved around the entire concept of ”God”. When I re-immersed myself in the memory of the experience, I saw there was no “God”, or any other supreme being, there. God was simply part of the fullness of the emptiness. And this was the only thing that was “real”, the full emptiness. That meant that God was part of the illusion. . . .

“How could that be?” I wondered. As a spiritual person, I spent a great deal of time praying. I knew the power of prayer both in my personal life and as an integral part of my healing work. As a channel, I received actual information and profound guidance for my clients from guides and angels. It had been so difficult years earlier, to push past my disbelief to include these very things that were spontaneously happening in my life. What now? If there were no “real” God or guides or angels, who had been talking to me all this time? How was it that I clearly received information that was not mine? If they were only illusion, why did prayer work? Why did it feel so darn good?

So I “knew” from my experiences with prayer and channeling that God really existed. And I “knew” from my experiences with the emptiness that the only thing that really existed was the emptiness. How could I reconcile these two seemingly contradictory truths?

Suddenly it all became clear: God is the user-friendly interface for the Infinite, just as angels and guides are the user-friendly interface for God. These were not conflicting truths; they were both true. The whole experience of an infinite emptiness that contains the entirety of existence is largely ungraspable at any but the most intellectual of levels (unless of course you’ve had that experience), whereas the experience of an infinite supreme being, reminding us of our experience of our all-powerful parent(s) as a young child, is rather familiar and quite easy to relate to. Our relationship to an anthropomorphic God draws us close in an easy way. It is, at first, harder to love something that doesn’t have a face.

The final irony of this perception, is that everyone gets to be right, even people who insist there is no God. In the ultimate reality as I experienced it, that’s true; there’s only the full emptiness. Perhaps their nagging doubt stems from perceiving this truth at an unconscious level. Of course, at that level, there is no you or me either. The bottom line is that the “real” reality is all or nothing (ie: there is a God, people, Earth, etc., or there is nothing, only the illusion of these things), and that in the experience of the full emptiness, these are synonymous.

Cari Alter is a gifted Tranformational Life Coach, a Spiritual Guide and Healer, a Sound Healer, certified practitioner of Hands-on Healing, Reconnective Healing and Master M.A. Breatherapy, as well as a Reiki Master, with a private practice and transformative meditation classes and workshops in Marin County, California. Long distance phone or Skype sessions are also available and are equally effective.

Cari is the publisher/founder of the free online magazine: The Inner Light Gazette, Quiet Moments for Busy People. She has lectured numerous times at the Whole Life Expo, the Institute of Noetic Sciences Petaluma, San Rafael & West Marin chapters, and adult education classes nationwide. She is the author of "Thrilled to Be Alive! 3 Steps to Living the Life You Were Born to Live," a free thank you gift when you subscribe to the gazette. : www.innerlightgazette.com/subscribe 415-717-6337